


avoxed

by edgehog



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Ick, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-03-31 21:19:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13983537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edgehog/pseuds/edgehog
Summary: He doesn’t say any of this. Obviously: he can’t say anything. But he can shake his head when Burr asks the question, and he adds a shrug for good measure.Nothing, I don’t remember anything, it doesn’t matter anyway.Burr understands. That is the good thing about Burr — and the damnable thing, yes. They understand each other.Pity it doesn’t help them get along.





	1. Chapter 1

Darkness. He remembers darkness. The sour smell of mildew and someone crying, far away.

He cried too when they told him what would happen, couldn’t help it, after three days in that lightless airless cell and so thirsty he licked the floor and gagged because it wasn’t  _water_ and kept licking it until his brain caught up with his body and he vomited it all back up, back onto the floor: and then he was even more thirsty and hungry. Tired. So tired. He'd only wanted to die, then. Everything in the world narrowed down to thirst and the threat of pain. 

He expected pain. He didn’t expect cruelty.

 _Idiot,_  he told himself, screaming obscenities and begging in alternate breaths until they strapped him down and held open his mouth and used the big clippers, the ones they used to castrate young bulls.

He thinks maybe he stopped screaming then, when they cut him; he thinks maybe he fainted.

He doesn't remember anything else for a long time, except that someone was crying and could not be consoled, and he wished alternately for them to die or shut up or feel better — anything for silence.

Then someone threw water on his face and he woke blinking and the sobbing stopped.

So maybe it was him after all.

 

He doesn’t say any of this. Obviously: he can’t say anything. But he can shake his head when Burr asks the question, and he adds a shrug for good measure.  _Nothing, I don’t remember anything, it doesn’t matter anyway._

Burr understands. That is the good thing about Burr — and the damnable thing, yes. They understand each other.

Pity it doesn’t help them get along.

  

Pity that it is Burr who finds him in the first place — shivering and sick and cold, stumbling towards camp from the main road, where the British tossed him before they went on their own business. They had no interest in keeping him a prisoner; they had no interest in whatever secrets he held or did not hold. They only wanted to strike a blow. A warning as good as a war.

 

No one could be much threatened by the hunched and sodden figure of Hamilton as he stumbles through high grass and the morning fog rolling up from the river.

But he must look grim: Burr’s habitually taciturn expression flickers a moment, like a candle in a draft, before settling again. “Hamilton — where have you — what happened?”

Alex shakes his head.

“Come on,” says Burr. "I'm going to the camp myself." Then: “Can you walk the way there? Have you eaten?”

Another shake.

Burr rummages in his pocket, unwraps a handkerchief and offers something to eat.

Alex wants to roll his eyes at how  _ridiculously_  fastidious Burr is, even during a war, but it's too much effort: he shakes his head instead, the easiest type of communication he has. He can't eat it, even if he wanted to. He can’t chew properly yet. May never be able to do it again. There are so many things you use your tongue for.

He thinks of eating pablum and mush for the rest of his life: it makes him want to die. A familiar feeling of late.

Through the haze of self-hatred and fear and lingering pain, he sees Burr make a Gallic shrug. “Suit yourself. But I won’t carry you, if you fall.”

Fair enough, thinks Alex. If their positions were reversed, he wouldn’t carry Burr, either. 

A mile later, he admits to himself that he wouldn’t have offered the food.

Three miles, and five, and he’s so tired he is stumbling, and Burr sees it and says nothing. Alex looks at him, wishes so fiercely it was Burr bleeding and helpless and mutilated that nausea overtakes him, and then dizziness.

Then he does fall, really.

 

When he wakes, the daylight is strangely dimmed and his head is pounding and —

“Into the bucket, please,” says a voice. A hand holds back his hair; hands pass him a mug of water.

Brown hands. Burr’s hands.

Alex doesn’t look up — partly to keep his head from spinning again — mostly because he cannot bear to look at Burr while he is tended and comforted and soothed like a child -- so he shuts his eyes. He drinks.

It burns. Something catches in his throat. He coughs, holds still, takes more water and spits it on the ground.

Blood. Thick strands of blood, some pink and some red and some brown and some black and tarry and clotted.

He stares at it, can't look away. 

Burr speaks. “Hamilton — what did they _do_ to you?”

Well. 

Alex can’t very well answer with speech, can he. But there are other forms of communication. 

He raises his head and opens wide his mouth and for once, for once, has the pleasurable sensation of shaking Burr out of his tepid complacency.


	2. Chapter 2

Later.

“I did think you uncommonly quiet on the walk back,” says Burr. He speaks quietly himself, like he thinks his voice will harm the voiceless.

Alex dips his pen and writes: _Not much to talk about._

“And you don’t want to tell me what happened.”

Alex underlines what he just wrote, staring at Burr.

“You know Washington will need to be told. Not only — the bare facts, but the why. Possibly _how_. Yes, of course it matters.”

Because Alex is shaking his head and shaking his head, _no no no._ He can’t stop Washington from being notified, he can’t stop questions, but by _god_ he will not discuss this, dissect it like it is some intriguing gossip at a dinner party. He has been dissected enough.

Burr reads the reply as fast as Alex can write it out: _I don’t remember anything._

He says, soft: “No one will believe that, you know. Especially not the General. Amnesia wouldn’t dare come near you. Our great and shining Hamilton.”

And then, speaking Alexander’s mind for the second time in as many minutes, Burr says: “But they won’t dare to argue.”

And he smiles.

 

  
They do not dare.

Burr writes Washington, and Alex finds himself grateful that it is Burr who took on this job, that a clipped and careful voice has become, in some way, his own.

He resents his own gratitude. _Fuck_ Burr, anyway. Why couldn’t Burr have been captured, instead? Why couldn’t he —

But it wouldn’t have happened. Burr doesn’t matter. Alexander does.

Or: he did. 

Now he sits day after day in Burr’s tent, refusing visitors, barely going out long enough to see the daylight.

 

  
Burr’s reticence is a blessing and a curse. Alex wants speech — craves it — but the sound only reminds him of what he’s denied. It wakens some terrible monster of fear and rage inside.

Silence quiets his rage, tramples it down, and so Alex turns to silence as he once turned to argument: it is the only and best way to find peace. He throws himself into reading. Law books, novels, military strategy — it doesn’t matter. 

Burr has plenty of books and he doesn’t seem to mind Alex reading them — indeed, he doesn’t seem to mind anything st all. Alex’s own patience waxes and wanes, but Burr obeys the request for  _more paper, more ink, more more_ with a steady willingness that does not erode. He brings edible food, coffee, newspapers, and fresh gossip.

And life becomes almost endurable again.


	3. Chapter 3

Burr ruins it, of course. He always ruins everything.

 

He is gone most of the day and Alex rests, doing nothing, looks at a book or traces the shadow of the clouds on the floor, dim through the canvas of the tent; at supper he comes back, carrying two bowls of food.

Alex reaches out for his share.

Burr smacks his hand.

_What the fuck,_  Alex tries to say, cannot say. 

“You don’t get to eat yet. First you have to earn it.”

Alex would like to shoot him.

Burr smiles. He's a bastard. “You need to learn to communicate.”

Alex grabs a quill from the table and shakes it in the air.

“What if you see Jefferson?”

He scribbles,  _My middle finger works just fine._

Burr ignores this. “There’s a man — a Frenchman — he founded a school for the deaf-mute —“

No. No no _no._

“And he wrote a book, explaining the language —“

No.

“Just five words,” Burr says, after a pause. “Five, and you get your food.” He looks at Alex. “Or would you rather go without paper? Or books?”

He wouldn’t dare. 

But Burr stares him down. And Alex considers what he knows of Burr: inexorable, patient as a spider, _damnably_ moral except when it comes to getting what he wanted.

He'll do it.

He says: “You don’t have any choice, Hamilton.”

So Alex lowers his head. For a moment he can’t breathe. This hurts. This feels like giving up.

He can’t look Burr in the face when he nods.

“Good,” says Burr: is that relief in his voice? “We’ll start with the alphabet. Just five letters, and then you can eat. This is A, then B, C ...”

 

 

There are only 26 letters in the alphabet. Barely a week later Alex sits back, flexes his hand through all the increasingly-familiar motions that make up the letters, and reaches for his stew.

Burr stops him. “Not yet.”

What now.

“Book. Pen. Paper. Food.” He makes the sign for each as he speaks it aloud, repeating the motion until Alex wants to throttle him — and yell.  _I’m not stupid and this is not difficult._

_Book pen paper food_ , and the letter Z, the final letter, drawn in the air with a flourish.

He reaches for it again.

“Spell them,” says Burr. “Sign it and spell it, Hamilton.”

He can smell the broth and mushy vegetables and some random meat; he can see steam rising off.

If he threw it at Burr, it might get him out of this bullshit. He could go out -- he could go sit with someone else -- there are other people he knows -- he has  _friends --_

But he doesn't move. Because Burr is here. Burr is the only one who’s tried to help, the only one who has one anything at all. Everyone else looks at him and skitters away their gaze.

_Book,_  Alex signs, slowly, spelling it even more slowly.  _Pen. Paper. F_ _ood,_ spelling it f-o-d.

Burr laughs aloud.

Alex flushes red and takes hi _s_  meal outside, where there are a thousand eyes but no one will expect anything from him at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Fuck_ was the first sign Alex coined for himself.

Alex learns fast, thank god, because when he can’t remember a word or confuses one sign with another, Burr takes away his paper and pens and books and leaves him to sulk.

He could go talk to someone else — but no one else knows even these rudiments of hand-speech, and writing everything is so tedious and slow, and ...

And they’ll look at him like he is a freak.

Or worse: with pity.

Burr — who seems to feel sympathy for insects and woodland creatures and maybe even rocks and dirt — has never given Alexander’s pain more than a thoughtful expression.

He does it now. Coming in to the tent, acknowledging Hamilton’s presence with nothing more than a disinterested nod while Alex scrambles to hide himself, rub the flush and brightness from his face, to cover the signs he’s been weeping again. _Self-pity, again?_ he hears himself say in someone else’s voice. _You’re that weak, Alexander?_

No — no —

He stands up. Slams a hand on the little table, so the inkjar jumps and a quill falls off to the ground and even Burr turns.

“What is it?”

 _I hate you,_ Alex tries to say. “Ahhh” — and he claps a hand over his mouth — he wants to dissolve in shame and pain and fear — he hasn’t heard his voice in two months except in screaming nightmares, and (worse) those few dreams where he is whole — his tongue is gone, his tongue, how has he forgotten that? Did he think honesty would repair the breach?

Helplessly he looks at Burr.

Burr is gone ashen. Burr, the soldier who enlisted as a child and walked a thousand winter miles and saw his commander take a bullet in snow-silent woods, Burr whose own commands saved Hamilton’s life, Burr who comes in from skirmishes bloody with other people’s blood and only washes it off his face, his hands, before he returns to the work of writing.

Burr. Who understands him better than anyone, maybe, now Laurens is dead.

And Burr does not speak. He does not speak. He has a voice and a tongue and he does not even bother to use it and Alex wants to hurt him wants to shoot him wants wants wants to cut him down with a few words. He could do it. Or —

He _used_ to be able to do it.

Alex makes an inarticulate noise and leaves.

 

It is bright outside. He always forgets how bright the world is, unfiltered by tent canvas.

People stop talking when he comes near them. They stare.

Fuck them. He starts off — he will go to the river — he’ll let the water shut his eyes and fill his ears and he will pretend for a while that he is utterly senseless — that he is dead. He will try to stop wishing for it.

Hands catch him and stop him. “Sir —“

So he takes out the stump of graphite and paper he carries now. _I want to go for a swim._

“We can’t let you do that, sir.”

Why the fuck not? Alex shakes his head, shrugs, stares, waits for an explaination that is not forthcoming.

They look at him. Look at each other. They don’t understand.

Grimly he writes _Why_ and holds it up, and then the excuses fall over each other: he isn’t allowed to go outside of camp, he isn’t allowed to the river, he isn’t allowed —

 _Thank you,_ Alex writes, interrupting this flood of bullshit. _You are very helpful._

He turns on his heel and leaves, stumbling now as he walks faster, not quite breaking into a run but too fast, too fast, because his eyes are full again and if he’s not careful he will be crying openly in front of the entire camp.

 

Inside the tent is dimness, and Alex is sun-blind; he thinks he is alone. He sags in relief, wipes a hand across his face.

Then he sees Burr —

— and snaps. _What the fuck do you want._

 _Calm down,_ says Burr with his hands.

_Fuck you._

_Tell me what happened,_ says Burr, and when Alex shakes his head and shuts his eyes, Burr says it aloud: “Tell me.”

Alex says: _I talked with the men. I wanted the river. But I can’t —_

— and then he is lost, he doesn’t have language for this, how can he say _Washington thinks I am going to kill myself and he might be right,_ how can he explain wanting to breathe underwater until the pain stops, how can he articulate any of this even if he had words and a tongue and speech?

And then he is crying again, and he hates himself.

It doesn’t improve when Burr sighs and walks out.


	5. Chapter 5

That night, he dreams.

Sleep has been a merciful blank since — since. The first night he was back Burr gave him something from a small bottle, dropped in his mouth right over the spot his tongue used to be, and he slept deeply and darkly, no awareness of pain troubling him. So it goes every night. Drug; sleep; descent.

Tonight he takes the same dose and —

  
_— again he’s in the cell and they are pulling him out and holding him down and he’s pleading and weeping and all the while he knows with a sick terror this is his last chance before they force open his mouth and the blades come down and the terrible pain comes all through him —_

  
Hands over his mouth, real hands now and he’s screaming louder, his own voice over the sound of someone saying his name again and again until his mind catches up and there is Burr on the cot next to him, pressed up close next to him, it is Burr’s hand over his mouth and Burr’s voice in his ear — and that is so baffling that Alex stops.

Burr is breathing hard. Says “You were yelling — you were having a dream —it was only a nightmare — it’s not real, it’s only a dream —“

Alex knows that. He _knows_ that, and having Burr say it shouldn’t hurt him like this but it does ( _only a dream_ when it is the longest horror of his life) — he starts to shake, starts to choke, and then starts to cry. Not little sniffling noises like he has done before. He is sobbing, choking on air.

“Hamilton,” says Burr. “ _Alex_.”

— and he doesn’t say anything more or at least not anything important, just murmurs of acknowledgment and solace, a recognition of pain without fighting against it. He isn’t angry.

Alex is angry. He cannot forget this is his fault for being found spying, for being captured. The pain is his fault for being weak, it is what he deserves.

 _They hurt me,_ he wants to say. Confess. His face is against Burr’s neck and he is breathing in hard gasps, like a child after a beating. He can’t say the words — but he couldn’t say them even if he were still whole. It’s beyond him to admit that aloud.

Burr’s hands rub his back. _Shh_.

 _I didn’t mean to be caught._ This time he finds Burr’s hands and folds them around his own, and signs his speech, spelling each letter laboriously so Burr will understand it, even in the dark: _I was scouting._

Burr realizes what he is doing. Says, soft: _Oh_. It’s just a breath into his neck, not even a word.

 _They caught me. Kept me. Three days. Then,_ and he tries to go on, forming letters that don’t go anywhere, stuttering words with his hands like he used to do with his tongue, like the quill scratches and stutters when he writes too fast, like a candle before it goes finally dark.

They are in the dark. Burr is dark, solid darkness next to him. Hiding him. Forgiving him until he can do it for himself.

Alex’s breathing slows and levels.

Burr reaches out. Touches his face. _Alex_ , he says.

 _Burr_ , says Alex, voiceless, skin to skin.

**Author's Note:**

> for KM, whose voice cannot be silenced.


End file.
